Its Not Harry

Comment and opinion for retail investors in the UK

Mark Potter

YAP – 2025 as seen from New York

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I receive a daily news feed on markets from the Dealbook team at the New York Times. I find this useful as we all know that what happens in the US stock markets is highly relevant data in interpreting the global macro-economic climate and overall financial risk.

The New York team leader Andrew Ross Sorkin recently published his thoughts on what might happen in 2025. Now pundits there are a plenty, but this author has contacts at the very highest levels of US business, so you might be interested in his thoughts as context. I have picked the points I thought most relevant to UK-based retail investors. My own touch of flavour is added.

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Deep Dive – January 2025

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Fixed Income – a refresher

This article is designed to satisfy a couple of subscriber requests to offer more core information about fixed income investing.

The asset class that comprises Gilts, Treasuries, Eurobonds, corporate bonds, elements of bank capital, assorted ‘notes’, private credit and the like has been an important investment opportunity for centuries but most beginner investors will, at best, have as their only acquired knowledge of the fixed income market some knowledge of National Savings Certificates.

I freely admit that it took me several years of day-to-day involvement in investment markets as an adviser to feel intuitively comfortable thinking about fixed income (henceforth interchangeably called ‘bonds’  as well, although bonds is a looser term).  That was the case even though I had formal training in corporate finance as a Chartered Secretary and had experience of over a decade working for a mortgage bank.  It’s not a subject that one can skim over and grasp.

I have procrastinated about writing this sort of article until now as even an introduction or refresher requires quite a lot of words.  I hope what follows is digestible and useful.

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YAP – new video

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Below is a link to a new video in which I comment on the implications of Trump 2.0 as far as they can be judged at this early stage. My comments are partly based on a recent webinar given by Steve Bell, the Chief Economist (EMEA) for CT.

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YAP – an SDR Fixed Income fund for investors with sustainability priorities?

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Here is some news that will interest those readers who filter their fund selections with sustainability as a key factor. Of course, this is not a recommendation and all the usual research would be sensible if you like the idea. I paste below what was in one of my trade papers and is likely a press release text.

“EdenTree Investment Management’s Global Impact Bond fund has become the first fixed income strategy to publicly disclose it will be adopting the ‘Sustainability Impact’ label under the Financial Conduct Authority’s Sustainability Disclosure Requirements (SDR).

The label will be adopted from 3 February 2025, making the portfolio the third fund in EdenTree’s suite to adopt a label, after the EdenTree Green Future and EdenTree Green Infrastructure mandates recently revealed they will be using the Sustainability Impact label as well. 

This means that EdenTree has now adopted an SDR label across three major asset classes: equities, listed infrastructure and fixed income. “

YAP – global macro update at the year end

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I listened to a presentation by Steve Bell, chief European economist at CT (the fund manager formerly known as Columbia Threadneedle) earlier this week. His mandate was to summarise the main economic facts of 2024 and take some preliminary guesses at what might happen in 2025. I use the word ‘guesses’ because he will make another presentation next month when he will likely offer more evidence-based predictions.

Steve is a man of considerable experience (as we old guys like to describe being a boomer) and has a good track record on getting at least most of his short-term predictions right, which for an economist is indeed noteworthy!

Here you go – the facts

There was a huge amount of data in his 45-minute talk and I will make a video to give you my take on the elements that amount to interpretation and speculation/prediction. Meanwhile, for those of my readers who like cold facts in writing, here are some highlights. Note that this was a review for North America, Europe and the UK, without any detailed focus on the Asia Pacific region.

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